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This week I joined Maureen Jennings, author and creator of the Murdoch MysteriesTV show, to chat about some of the grislier holdings found at the Archives of Ontario.

The drinks: Maureen opted for Magners Cider — a popular selection among my guests — while I chose the Blood, Sand & Smoke, a variation on the classic cocktail which featured a single malt Scotch wash. A heavy drink for a late afternoon, but given the subject matter, a sensible choice.

Where: The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St. W.

Mixologist: Dave McNeil

Murdoch Mysteries has been on the air for seven seasons. Are you still creatively involved with the series?

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I don’t know about creative control, but I am definitely involved. We’ve got a great relationship. The writers are fabulous. They thrash out a story, sometimes we talk about it, sometimes we don’t.

Is this common for the Canadian television industry?

I’ve been very fortunate, and I think it’s more true in Canada that you’re more likely to have a good relationship because it’s a small community. In the States, I’ve heard horror stories.

Murdoch Mysteries was recently picked up for U.S. distribution, correct?

It was. They’ve changed the name to The Artful Detective. Two of the chaps with the network called me recently because they’re coming up to the set and asked me what I thought. I said it would’ve been nice to have it called Murdoch: The Artful Detective. Their title sounds like the Artful Dodger to me.

How did research into some of the cases come about?

I went to the provincial archives, which were then on Grenville St. and because it was a crime story, I needed to go to the criminal case files. I spent hundreds of happy hours going through terrible cases. When I was on the second book, the archives received a whole contingent of coroner’s inquests.

If you’re drawing on names and events from archival files, how did you get around the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act?

I deliberately went 100 years back, to 1895, where the restrictions end.

Were you troubled by any particular cases?

One in particular. Every file has a different label, and in the box for murders, one file was labelled “blasphemy.” The case had no name attached, but there was a little card, a Sunday School card that fit in the palm of your hand. On it was a picture of Jesus, and around the edges was handwriting — obscenities your paper will not publish — which was identified as that of a 12 year old girl. I wondered: Is this a genuine artifact? Well it was, because the blasphemy charge was there, and she was sent to an industrial school.

That’s horrifying.

Absolutely horrifying. So my question was how did she know these words? Where had she seen them? What happened to her later on? So that became Night’s Child, the fifth Murdoch book.

When I first heard of a period show set in Toronto, I wondered how difficult location scouting would be.

We’ve had to go out of town a lot. Victorian Toronto was purged during the 1960s so it’s been harder to find houses that haven’t been gentrified or that are still there. We’ve come to rely on places like Hamilton, Port Perry, Cobourg. We’ve only had a few episodes — not even episodes but scenes — that are genuine Toronto. There was Allen Gardens, Cherry Beach.

So not the Gladstone then?

The Gladstone is so beautiful fixed up, but no.

Eric Veillette tweets about spirits, cocktails and the city @VeilletteTO

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